McCarthy's Lie Puts GOP Hypocrisy on Trump on Display
WASHINGTON — Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s denial of disparaging comments he made about President Donald Trump after the Capitol attack Jan. 6, 2021, exposed a widely known but seldom seen phenomenon in Washington: the hypocrisy of Republicans who have privately scorned Trump while publicly defending him.
McCarthy, R-Calif., who is campaigning to be speaker of the House if his party wins the majority in November, had dismissed as “totally false and wrong” a report that he had told fellow GOP leaders he would urge Trump to resign from office after the riot. But an audio recording of the conversation revealed McCarthy’s denial to be a lie.
For McCarthy, the immediate political problem was not being caught in a lie. In the Republican Party, which has coalesced around Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, falsehoods have become routine and even accepted.
The greater danger for McCarthy on Friday had been the truth — that, with the disclosure of his negative comments about Trump, he might invite the ire of the former president, who maintains a stranglehold on his party and on a powerful faction of extremist House members who already pose the greatest risk to his political future. But by Friday evening, it appeared the danger would not materialize, as Trump told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that their relationship remained good.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mccarthys-lie-puts-gop-hypocrisy-142120853.html
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